How-to: Blending images in photoshop

[buzzsaw]

Don't let Dan sell himself short, I know how talented he is in the field photographing as well as photoshop, he is one skilled individual.

I almost forgot, nice blend job and final result, Steve.

[jonny_redhorse]

Holy Moly! it's Mike! ....Glad to see you're still around Mike

[buzzsaw]

Thanks, Johnny!

[Dbl]

HEEEEESSSS BACKKKKKKKKKKKK!

[finnbay]

Dan,

Your examples are showing up on my computer now. They weren't earlier. I work at a school and sometimes the filters heres mess with what they let through. Those are the photos I was referring to wanting to see. Thanks!

[WCS]

Great to see you back Buzzsaw! Looking forward to seeing more of your excellent work.

[Steve Foss]

Buzzy, I welcomed you back on the other thread, but, heck, you can never welcome someone back too much. Great to see you back here. We missed you.

[buzzsaw]

Awww, your too kind. Thanks again, Steve.

On a sidenote, I was up in your neck of the woods in late August... I visited a few shops and one of the ladies knew you and asked who I was etc... Brandenbergs gallery looked nice, alot of Giclee on canvas going on there. I was over on Burntside lake... very nice! Ely is a very nice town... then I headed over to Orr for some bears.

[Steve Foss]

Jim's gallery is a must see, IMO. I still go in there once in awhile even though I know all of the images pretty well. It's such a great presentation of his fine work, and is always peaceful.

Because of being editor of one of the two local papers for four years (before quitting this summer) and having my work in there all the time, I got pretty well known around town in a much shorter period of time than it would normally have taken. And Ely is, of course, a small pond in the grand scheme of things.

[buzzsaw]

It was at the shop right across the street from Brandenbergs gallery, (on the corner) a middle aged woman that was very nice.

[yakfisher]

So, the October issue of PC Photo happens to have an article on how to combine photos in elements. And here they are. I just quickly make adjustments to the photos so that one exposed the water and one exposed the person. I then created a layer and copied and pasted the person exposure over water exposure. I then used the magic eraser to wipe out the over exposed water and revealed the correctly exposed water below. I unfortunately overexposed the person a little bit and I really had to play with the sensitivity of the magic eraser to get the effect I did. Let me know what you think. I think this is a process I am going to have to refine so that I can continue to play with images like this.

Here is the Original:

This is the Water exposure:

This the the exposure of the person:

And this is the final product:

Thanks for looking and for the help.

[finnbay]

Wow! Is this a hot topic recently. Just got my issue of Outdoor Photographer today and it has two articles on the same topic. I have only briefly looked over them. Will get into more tonight when I do my bedtime reading. Yakfisher, I think you're close. It looks really good. I tend to like things just a tad below that exposure (eye of the beholder thing) but definitely a big improvement over the original!

[Dbl]

I would say it looks pretty good as well yakfisher, I'm with Ken I think the water is still a bit overexposed but it is not bad.

Ken I just saw the methods in OP yesterday, and I use both multiply and screen layers frequently. I think they work great.

[Steve Foss]

Cool, yakfisher. That takes care of how to do it in Elements. Thanks everybody for taking an interest in this thread. And not to mention that FM beat some major magazines to the punch! Kidding, of course. These techniques have been around for quite some time. Just seemed like, since so many here are taking images with large dynamic contrast ranges, it would be a good thing to explore.

And you guys who are looking at the OP methods, please chime in about them.

[Eyehunter2]

Im pretty new to digital cameras and am wondering what would be a good starter or Intermediate photo program to purchase? All I have now is basic HP photo that came with camera.

[Steve Foss]

Photoshop Elements is the standard intermediate in the industry, though there are many other programs that work just fine. Elements, if I remember correctly, runs about $85 to $100. It lets you do all the standard things needed to make excellent prints or post beautiful pics online. Just google Photoshop Elements 6 and you'll find lots of places to buy it online. Elements 5 is just about as good and it's even cheaper.

[Eyehunter2]

thanks I will look into it and let you know how it works for me. I will probably have even more questions

[Steve Foss]

When you have questions like that, go ahead and start a fresh thread. That will ensure that the largest number of folks see your question, and you'll get more answers from different people that way.

[Eyehunter2]

Thanks I will do that.I downloaded photoshop Elements 6 last nite I didnt figure that out in five min.

[carlcmc]

here is a result of some multiexposure blending that I did recently.

[image] [/image]

from my flickr page.

and another one:

[image]http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1873757614&size=m&context=photostream[/image]

from my flickr page.

The were done with 3 exposures. 3 NEF (nikon raw files) at -2,0,+2 exposure and blended with an HDR blending program and then massaged in CS3.

[carlcmc]

not sure why the tags aren't making the pic show up?

[Steve Foss]

carl, the last thing before the final image tag has to be .jpg, so that explains why your second one's not showing up. I don't know why the first one isn't, unless all those tons of numbers and characters before the .jpg shouldn't be there.